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Thailand news, politics, business, crime, lifestyle, and tourism—stay updated with breaking news and in-depth analysis from Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, and beyond.
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Restaurant owner returns 700,000 baht to tourist
Imagine discovering you’ve left close to three quarters of a million baht in cash at a Thai restaurant. That’s exactly what happened to a tourist from Ubon Ratchathani on Sunday. Fortunately for him, the money was in good hands. Pariwat Thangtham was horrified to discover he’d left a bag with 700,000 baht in cash at a restaurant in Petchabun province, central Thailand.…
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Central Thailand woman battles snake that appears from the toilet
You go to the toilet, you sit on the toilet, you don’t expect a snake in the toilet. But that’s what happened to a woman in central Thailand. “We all think that it’s something that won’t happen to us, I thought that was too until now when this happened in my own home. How can a snake this size be…
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Thousands join the pro and anti government protests in Bangkok
Protesters, from both sides of the political camp turned up in two different parts of the capital yesterday for their respective political rallies. Organiser of the anti-regime “Wing Lai Lung” (Run to Oust the Uncle), Tanawat Wongchai, told the crowds at Suan Rot Fai in Chatuchak, a northern suburb of Bangkok, that the run marked the start of the campaign…
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8,000 evacuated from menacing Taal volcano, south of Manila, Philippines
A volcano, not far south of Manila in The Philippines, has been spewing volcanic ash along with rumbling sounds and tremors most of yesterday. Philippine authorities have raised the alert level and ordered the evacuation of about 8,000 residents and suspended flights at Manila’s civil airports. The highest alert is level 5, when a volcano is actually erupting. At this…
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Police doubt gold robbery was the motive for deadly Lopburi attack
Police and authorities now suspect that the motive for Thursday’s brutal and deadly attack, which killed three, including a toddler, may not have been robbery. The lone gunman stormed into a gold shop at a Robinson’s Shopping Centre in Lopburi, Central Thailand, and systematically shot and killed customers and shop staff. The Crime Suppression Division is running background checks on…
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Murdered foreign woman’s body found in travel bag on a Sri Racha beach
Chon Buri police are seeking a suspect after the body of a foreign woman washed up in a travel bag at Bang Phra Beach in the province’s Sri Racha district, north of Pattaya. The victim was stuffed inside a black travel bag with red patterns. Her nationality remains unknown. The woman was dressed in a camouflage shirt, black shorts, and white running…
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Drought prompts Tesco Lotus to increase bottled water production
Tesco Lotus, the Thai division of Britain’s biggest retailer, is boosting bottled water production to help customers cope with drought. The chain says it will increase production of its own branded bottled water and also increase orders of other brands to sell at its branches nationwide, in response to this year’s drought and water shortages, which is predicted to be the…
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Mother and daughter busted for selling meth pills in Thailand’s north east
A mother and daughter are currently in custody after their arrest for selling ‘yaba’, or methamphetamine pills in Kalasin, north east Thailand. The 54 year old woman, named only as Sang, and her 25 year old daughter Tarnthip, were arrested at their home in the northeastern city of Kalasin with 13 yaba pills and the 280 baht cash used in…
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Two motorbike thieves nabbed in Phuket
Two men have been arrested in Phuket last night. They’ve been charged with stealing motorcycles and then reselling them. One of the arrested men is an unemployed 36 year old tour bus driver. According to police, he was able to convince a 21 year old accomplice, who was his neighbour, to help him steal the motorcycles,. The stolen motorbikes were…
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Thousands gather for this morning’s protest running event in Bangkok
This morning’s fun run/rally/political event/marathon/jog/protest at Suan Rot Fai park in Chatuchak, a northern Bangkok suburb, attracted thousands of runners. The run was organised as a protest against Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and his government. The “Run Against Dictatorship” was organised by opposition political parties and activists calling for greater political freedom. The event was held less than 10…
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Guns, tanks and political speeches. Just another Children’s Day in Thailand.
Children’s Day has come and gone for another year. As usual, the media like to follow the Thai PM in the hope of a perfect photo of him and an unsuspecting Thai child. The prime minister certainly enjoys the annual interaction and appears more comfortable surrounded by children than performing in Parliament. It’s also a day that the Thai armed…
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4 out of 19 missing Rohingya captured after Wednesday’s detention centre escape
4 Rohingya migrants who escaped with 15 others from a Songkhla detention centre earlier this week have now been captured. The superintendent of Songkhla Province’s Immigration Bureau reported yesterday that four more of the detained Rohingya had been captured. Rohingya migrants entering Thailand, often as boat passengers or smuggled on their way to Malaysia, are treated as illegal immigrants and…
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Iran military admits ‘unintentionally’ shooting down the Ukrainian passenger jet
Iranian officials have announced that its military “unintentionally” shot down the Ukrainian Boeing 737 jet that crashed earlier this week, killing all 176 aboard. Earlier the Iranian government had repeatedly denied accusations that it was responsible. The plane was “accidentally”shot shot out of the sky on Wednesday, just hours after Iran had launched a retaliatory missile attack on two US…
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Thailand is the leading ASEAN nation in annual suicide rates
“Thailand, which ranks in 32nd place with 14.4 of suicides per 100.000 population – or nearly 10,000 suicide deaths last year.” Every 40 seconds, someone loses their life to suicide and nearly 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, according to the World Health Organisation. In Thailand, suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds, after…
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Senior police double down with their praise of the new Biometrics system at Thai airports
Police are doubling down with their overt support of the new biometrics system at airports. A high-level disagreement over the 2.1 billion baht contract for the biometrics equipment and installation, is emerging as the reason for last yea’s mystery side-lining of the former head of Thailand’s immigration Bureau, Surachat Hakparn. Ever since the introduction of the systems at airports across…
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Gunman wasn’t after gold – investigators speculate about killer’s motives
Investigators have become suspicious of the motives of the lone gunman who shot and killed three people, injuring another four, at the Aurora Gold Shop in the Robinsons Mall in Lopburi on Thursday. They are seeking more information on the victims as the gold stolen was such a small amount – the suspicion is that the target wasn’t the gold…
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100s of pages of damaging documents about the 737 Max released by Boeing
Boeing has released more than 100 pages of internal company documents to the House and Senate committee, and media, further casting doubt about the company’s goodwill around the troubled 737 Max jet. The latest incarnation of the Boeing 737 was grounded last year after two fatal crashes which exposed weaknesses in the design development process and software systems. 400 of…
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Call centre raid in Bangkok – French citizens arrested
Ten French citizens have been arrested on charges of working illegally at an international call centre in Bangkok. Immigration officials were acting on a tip off and had already obtained a court-authorised search warrant to enter the building on Soi Thong Lor 25 in Wattana, central Bangkok. The building was a four-storey house modified for office work. Speaking to the media…
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Lone gunman storms into Lopburi gold shop and kills three people – VIDEO
Police are now on the hunt for the Lopburi gold-shop robber who has killed three and injured four. The man stormed into a Robinson Department Store gold shop last night killing three people as he walked in. He shot without hesitation and paid no attention to the people he’d shot. One of them was a young boy. The gunman also…
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Crunching the numbers on Phuket’s hotels – 2020
PHOTO: Travel 141 Bill Barnett from c9Hotelworks, crunches the numbers and reports on some challenges for Thailand’s largest island and most popular tourist destination, outside of Bangkok. Robust passenger arrivals in the second half of 2019 highlighted by growth in Indian tourists helped rebalance the island’s tourism sector, according to the C9 Hotelworks newly released Phuket Hotel Market Update (link…
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US Treasury mulls putting Thailand on its ‘watchlist’ as a currency manipulator
Thailand’s trade surplus with the US has now exceeded US$20 billion. Bloomberg reports that this could trigger the Thai currency to be added to the US Treasury’s watchlist of “currency manipulators”. According to US Census Bureau data, the surplus reached US$20.05 billion in the 12 months up to the end of November 2019. That exceeds a $20 billion upper limit…
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Three killed, others injured in Lopburi gold shop robbery – VIDEO
Three people are now dead and another four injured after a lone gunman entered a Lopburi gold shop, shooting customers and then robbing the store (video below). Lopburi is about 150 kilometres north of Bangkok. The armed robbery took place at a gold shop in Robinson Department Store in the main city district of Lopburi province Speaking to the media…
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Thailand’s top cop embroiled in the Surachat car-shooting case – Audio clip released
“Stay away from Big Joke shooting.” A leaked phone conversation reveals Thailand’s senior police chief instructing a deputy to distance himself from the Surachat drive-by shooting case. Former Immigration Chief Pol Lt Gen Surachat Hakparn’s white Lexus SUV was shot at eight times in a Patpong soi in Bangkok on Monday night. There was no one n the car at the…
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Chinese scientists identify the ‘Wuhan Virus’. Screening continues on Thai-bound flights.
The mysterious pneumonia-like disease striking dozens of people in Wuhan, China, has now been identified as from the same family of viruses as the deadly SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). This news from Chinese scientists today. Earlier today The Thaiger reported that three Thais and a Chinese citizen had been detected arriving from Wuhan in the Hubei province with suspected viral…
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Former immigration supremo says gunshots linked to airport biometrics project
“There’s only one motive” – Surachat Hakparn The former Thai immigration police chief Surachat Hakparn, aka.”Big Joke”, denies that the incident, where gunshots were fired into his car on Monday, was a staged stunt. But he has addressed a media scrum speculating the incident is linked to the Immigration Bureau’s controversial procurement procedures for its biometrics and smart car projects.…
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Cabinet threatens to open up fishing labour to migrant workers
Fisherman from 22 of Thailand’s 76 provinces are demanding the government solve the labour problem in the fisheries’ industry. The government, in turn, is threatening to invoke Article 83 of the Royal Ordinance on Fisheries, which would essentially allow immigrant labour in the sector. The relevant committee in the House proposes opening two registration periods for migrant workers, the first from…
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Justice minister orders probe in prison deaths
An investigation is now proceeding into the deaths of four inmates at the Phitsanulok Provincial Prison who died with “extremely low potassium and high levels of thyroid hormone in their blood”, more commonly thought to be food poisoning. The Thai Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin, who ordered the probe, says he suspects prison administrators were inadvertently, or possibly even deliberately, negligent.…
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“Dr. Ganja” is helping promote medical marijuana in Thailand
The Thai health ministry has come up with a plush toy character to encourage children to better understand Thailand’s current stance on marijuana and cannabis, now championed by the Health Minister as a new agricultural industry in Thailand. Yes, that’s a photo of the Thai PM holding a toy Dr Ganja doll which will be used to promote marijuana and…
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Young men busted selling drugs online in Phuket, Phang Nga from their Twitter account
Two young Thai men are being held by police after their arrests on Monday for selling drugs online in the southern provinces of Phuket and Phang Nga, according to the Thai news blog Khaosod. The online drug trade is becoming an enormous business operating using common, everyday social media and delivery platforms. The suspects, 16 and 20 years old, opened…
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Surachat claims shots at his car were related to a 2 billion baht Immigration purchase
Thailand’s former immigration supremo, Surachat Hakparn, spoke to the media yesterday about the bullets fired into his car on Monday night. He was not in the car at the time. He speculated confidently that the shots fired at the white Lexus SUV, parked near a massage establishment in Patpong, Bangkok, were connected to a two billion baht purchase of a…
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